The Christmas and New Years holiday period is one of the best times to rope in new gym leads and grow your business. Particularly after the year we’ve seen (thanks 2020), it’s safe to say we’re all ready to put it behind us. Nothing says “fresh start” quite like a brand new year!
Often with a new year comes New Year’s resolutions and goals that people want to achieve. Health and fitness is frequently found at the top of these lists as people make commitments to themselves to better their approach to wellbeing. This gives your business a prime opportunity to attract new gym leads to your business.
So, here’s a few tips and tricks to attract new business over the holiday period!
Create a reasonable offer that entices
Sometimes a natural first reaction is to try and compete with the big franchises by offering big discounts on memberships and sign-up fees at the start of a new year. But guess what… Competing with these big players often isn’t achievable or reasonable for a smaller business. You also won’t be the only gym offering 4 weeks free when a new member signs up, or a gift pack for every new member!
Analyse what your competitors are doing and find a point of difference for your gym. Don’t just focus on offering discounts to your potential members, because hefty discounts won’t just throw a blow to your business’s pockets, but they’ll also alter your member’s expectations.
These new members are going to expect to always pay big discounts because that’s the way they signed up. And any membership price increases in the future may send them high-tailing it to a competitor down the road who’s trying to reel in new business with big discounts. And so the cycle continues!
Instead, focus on discounting where it makes sense, offer additional value to your members, and give them a gym experience where they feel comfortable and welcomed rather than sold to. That will speak volumes!
Offer free sessions to gym leads
Getting your gym leads to come in for a free session is a classic gym lead engagement tool for a reason: it works. Potential members LOVE to try before they buy, and can you blame them? Not all gyms are cut from the same cloth, and most won’t suit exactly what they’re looking for.
Offering free sessions to the local community can help you make a great impression of yourself – which is so important around the busy holiday period.
Just make sure to capture every lead that walks through your gym so you can follow up with them! MyMemberSales gym lead management software is a great tool to help you keep track of every single lead, reach out to them a crucial touch points in the buyer journey, and help them convert to a sale. Click here to learn more about MyMemberSales today!
Advertise your pools
It gets HOT in Australia and New Zealand during the summer holidays – there’s no denying that! So if your gym is blessed with a swimming pool then that would be a point of difference to highlight in your new business marketing campaign.
Make sure to shout about it on social media with heaps of great images, stories and video content to really show off how great your facilities are during the hot weather.
Offer kid-friendly classes
Do you allow children in your gym? Or are you finding that a few new members are teens just beginning their gym journeys?
Cater to this niche market and run group fitness classes for kids over the summer break! Not only will it be a great way to engage your younger clientele, help them specialise and inspire young kids to keep active, but it will also give their parents an opportunity to complete their own workout out on the gym floor.
Likewise, if you have a few teenagers signing up to your gym, offer classes to them (or at least a few PT sessions) to help introduce them to the gym in a safe and educational way. The worst thing that can happen is young teens coming into a gym, loading up a bar with far too much weight, lifting with incorrect form and injuring themselves as a result. So start them off the right way and offer them some education so they don’t learn the wrong things from uneducated sources.
Want to learn how to keep your New Year’s gym leads engaged so they convert to a long-term paying customer? Check out this blog right here!